Alan Parsons worked as a sound engineer on the Beatles' Abbey Road and
the Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of the Moon, two of the most lushly
arranged albums of all times.
He then became an equally successful producer.
In 1976 he and keyboardist Eric Woolfson formed the Alan Parsons Project
and released Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Arista, 1976), a concept
album based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories, notably the five-movement suite
The Fall Of The House Of Usher.
This established the tradition of making only concept albums (mostly composed
by Woolfson) and using
a revolving cast of guest vocalists and sessionmen.
Generous doses of synthesizers allowed Parsons to sculpt
ambitious quasi-symphonic architectures that would remain his trademark.

After the gothic theme of its debut album, the Project proceeded to deal with
sci-fi on I Robot (1977), whose instrumentals
(I Robot, Nucleus, Total Eclipse, Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32) are among the most intriguing of Parsons' career.
The formula had been watered down to yield songs that could flood the radios.
Pyramid (1978), dedicated to ancient Egypt, which still features some
I Robot-style instrumentals
(Voyager, In The Lap Of The Gods, Hyper-Gamma-Spaces),
and Eve (1979),
which includes the instrumentals Lucifer and Secret Garden,
were lame imitations of the early albums.

The progress towards soft-rock and MOR balladry began with
The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), their most electronic album yet,
that contains the hits
Games People Play and Time, as well as the suite
The Turn of a Friendly Card,
and peaked with the awfully
commercial Eye In The Sky (1982), whose Eye In The Sky
became Parsons' best seller (Mammagamma is the other highlight).
Ammonia Avenue (1984) added Don't Answer Me to the best-seller
list.
Vulture Culture (1985) was uniformly bland.

Parsons decided to restore a bit of artistic prestige to his career with
Stereotomy (1986),
whose lengthy ballads (Stereotomy and Light Of The World)
and futuristic instrumentals (Urbania, Where's The Walrus,
Chinese Whispers)
are probably Parsons' most
elaborate compositions, and Gaudi (1987), which sounds more like
a philosophical treaty than a pop album (the
eight-minute La Sagrada Familia).

Freudiana (1990), which took three years to complete and employed dozens of musicians, basically an opera about Sigmund Freud,
Try Anything Once (1993),
The Time Machine (1999) are the later albums.

A flood of anthologies covers Parsons' career:
The Best of The Alan Parsons Project (1983),
The Best of The Alan Parsons Project - vol. 2 (1987),
The Instrumental Works (1988),
Anthology (1991) ,
The Ultimate Collection (1992),
The Best of The Alan Parsons Project (1992),
The Definitive Collection (1997),
Gold Collection (1998),
Encore Collection (1999), etc.

Woolfson became a composer of musicals:
Gaudi (1993), that incorporates music from the album,
Gambler (1996),
Dancing Shadows and
Edgar Allan Poe, premiered shortly before his death in december 2009.